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Rh Aristæus. A beneficent deity worshipped in various parts of Greece, especially in Thessaly, Bœotia, the African colony of Cyrēnē, and the Islands of Ceos, Corcȳra, Sicily and Sardinia. He gives his blessing to herds, hunting, bee-keeping, wine, oil and every kind of husbandry. In particular he defends men, animals and plants from the destructive heat of the dog-days. According to the story most in vogue, he is the son of Apollo by the Thessalian nymph Cyrēnē, whom the god carried off to the country named after her. She is the daughter of Hypseus, and granddaughter (another story says daughter) of the river-god Pēnēus. After his birth Hermēs took Aristæus to the Hours and Gæa, the goddess of the earth, who brought him up and made him an immortal god. Sometimes he is called the son of Urănus (Heaven) and Gæa (Earth). In the Theban legend he and Autŏnŏë the daughter of Cadmus are represented as the parents of Actæōn. He brought destruction upon the nymph Eury̌dĭcē, the beloved of Orpheus; for in fleeing from his persecutions she was killed by a snake. [Vergil, Georg. iv 315–558.]

 Aristarchus. (1) A tragic poet of Tĕgĕa, a contemporary of Eurīpĭdēs; he is said to have lived more than a hundred years. Of his 70 dramas only two titles remain.

(2) A mathematician and astronomer of Samos, who lived and studied at Alexandria about 270, and with his pupil Hipparchus greatly advanced the science of astronomy. He was the first who maintained the earth's motion round the sun and on its own axis. We still possess a fragment of a treatise by him on the size of the sun and moon, and their distances from the earth.

(3) A scholar, born in Samothrace, and a pupil of Aristophănēs of Byzantium. He lived at Alexandria in the first half of the 2nd century as tutor to the royal princes, and keeper of the library. In the tyrannical reign of his pupil Ptolemy VII (Physcōn) he fled to Cyprus, and there died of dropsy about 153, aged 72. He is the most famous of the Alexandrian Critics, and devoted his attention mainly to the Greek poets, especially Homer, to whom he rendered essential service by his critical edition of the text, which remains in substance the groundwork of our present recension. This edition had notes on the margin, indicating the verses which Aristarchus thought spurious or doubtful, and anything else worthv of remark. The meaning of the notes, and the reasons for appending them, were explained in separate commentaries and excursuses, founded on a marvellously minute acquaintance with the language and contents of the Homeric poems, and the whole of Greek literature. He was the head of the school of Aristarcheans, who continued working on classical texts in his spirit till after the beginning of the Empire. Of his numerous grammatical and exegetical works only fragments remain. An idea of his Homeric studies, and of their character, can best be gathered from the Venetian scholia to the Iliad, which are largely founded on extracts from the Aristarcheans Dĭdy̌mus and Aristonīcus.

 Aristĭas. See.

 Aristīdēs, (1) of Thebes. A celebrated Greek painter, the pupil of his father or brother Nicŏmăchus. He flourished about 350, and was distinguished for his mastery in the expression of the feelings. His most celebrated picture was that of a conquered city. Its central group represented a mother dying of a wound, and holding back her infant, who is creeping to her bosom, that it may not drink blood instead of milk. Notwithstanding the hardness of their colouring, his works commanded very high prices. Thus for one representing a scene in the Persian wars, containing 100 figures, he received 1,000 minæ (about £3,333). [Pliny, N. H.xxxv 98–100.]

(2) Aristides of Miletus, of the 1st or 2nd century, was the author of a series of love-stories, called Milēsĭăca, from Milētus, the scene of the events. These, so far as we know, are the first examples of the prose romance. They were widely read in antiquity, especially among the Romans, for whose benefit they were translated into Latin by the historian Sisenna. Only a few fragments of them have survived.

(3) Publius Ælius Aristides, surnamed Thĕŏdōrus, was a Greek rhetorician, born at Hadriani in Bithynia 117 or 129. He was educated by the most celebrated rhetoricians of the time, Pŏlĕmon of Pergămus, and Hērōdēs Attīcus of Athens, and made long journeys through Asia, Egypt, Greece and Italy. On his return he was seized with an illness that lasted thirteen years, but which he never allowed to interrupt his studies. His rhetoric, in which he took Demosthĕnēs and Plato for his models, was immensely admired by his contemporaries; he also stood in high favour with the emperors, especially Marcus Aurelius,